New York City Mayor Eric Adams understands why many Jewish New Yorkers are alarmed by anti-Israel state representative Zohran Mamdani’s Tuesday Democratic primary win.
“I think that the Jewish community should be concerned,” he told Anna Peckerman, of the Russian language Rusa Radio, on Wednesday.
“We know that he’s running on a platform that wants to defund the police department,” Adams said. “He used terrible rhetoric to describe the police department. He’s talking about removing police officers and using social workers instead.”
Mamdani has “a clear misunderstanding of how to run a city of this magnitude,” Adams said.
Mamdani’s policies, like rent freezes and free busing, are not feasible to implement, according to Adams.
“He’s making broken promises, and he’s no different than any other snake oil salesman that will tell people anything they want, saying that he has found a cure when in fact he has not found a cure to anything,” the mayor said.
Adams noted during the interview that his administration has worked with different faith communities to combat hate crimes targeting both Jews and Muslims.
On Wednesday, he called for a no-plea bargain rule in hate-crime cases, responding to an incident last week, in which a Queens Muslim woman wearing a hijab was assaulted in the subway.
“We know we must deal with the high numbers in the Jewish community for antisemitism, but we also know we must deal with even the smaller numbers in other communities, because no form of hate should be acceptable in our city,” the mayor said.
“Our goal is to be both proactive and reactive,” he said. “The reactive action involves making arrests and apprehensions, and I believe the district attorney should have a zero tolerance for a plea bargain.”
“We should not drop down the crimes to a lower level if a person is arrested for a hate crime,” he added.
